Comment: The Queen may forgive the IRA - but I never will

THOSE of us who have been touched personally by the bloodshed and murder meted out by his former associates will have looked on in amazement and disbelief as the Queen shook hands with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness at Windsor Castle last week.

In an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation and hope for the future, the Queen welcomed McGuinness into her home, alongside Irish President Michael D Higgins. In inviting McGuinness to sit at her table she did something I could never do. And I admire her for it.

She may be our sovereign but she is also a human being and to hold her tongue and pretend the murder of her husband’s uncle Lord Mountbatten never happened must have taken an iron will, for it is generally believed her honoured guest had a hand in its planning.

These days McGuinness is a democratically elected politician and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. Anyone else with those credentials would be welcome at a high-profile gathering whose purpose is to build bridges between Ireland and the UK. Anyone else but McGuinness.

Last week I saw the superhuman side of the Queen, putting aside personal feelings in the pursuit of a better world. I just wish I could be as strong as that.

The Queen chose her words with care. “We are walking together towards a brighter, more settled future,” she said. “We shall remember our past but we will no longer allow our past to ensnare our future.”

She was right. As a nation we must make friends, not enemies. Can we forgive, and can we forget though? I can do neither. Why? Because 31 years ago, I was diary editor of the Daily Express and, like most journalists, I finished my day’s work in the pub, on this occasion with a new colleague, 24-year-old Philip Geddes.

Philip had come a long way in a very short time. From a modest background in Barrow-in-Furness, he won a place at Oxford University and then landed his job in Fleet Street. He was young, personable and with a dash of exceptional promise. We shared a drink and said goodnight.

I never saw Philip again. The next day he was shopping for Christmas presents in Harrods and, on hearing there was a security alert, went in search of what he instinctively knew would be a good story. The IRA bomb killed him as he walked towards it.

The aftermath of the IRA car bombing of iconic department store Harrods in 1983 [GETTY]

Five others died and 90 were injured, including 14 police officers. Those who survived have never recovered from the horror and anguish of that day, while those who planted the bomb still walk free.

Philip’s death shattered his family, his colleagues, his friends. Last Christmas, 30 years after his murder, the traffic in Knightsbridge came briefly to a halt as a simple service was held to remember the dead and injured.

In a bustling London street there was an oasis of stillness and peace as 300 people, survivors, their friends, relatives and the bereaved, bowed their heads.

They had come from all over the country to share this one moment of silent remembrance. Karen Salveson Sykes, whose husband Kenneth Salveson was 28 when he died, returns each year from her home in the USA to stand in homage outside the store. The tears still flow, 30 years on.

Philip Geddes lives on in memory as vividly as if he were still here. Each year a memorial lecture is given in his name, delivered by such leading journalists as Jeremy Paxman and Jon Snow. Each year at Oxford, would-be journalists compete for a prize in his name, carrying on where he left off, keeping the flame burning.

However Philip is dead, murdered by the IRA, and when the IRA’s name is brought up I still shiver with anger and remorse at his tragic loss.

How much worse then for the Queen, and especially Prince Philip, to be forced to publicly embrace someone connected to the brutal murder of Lord Mountbatten.

I know, just as they do, that the loss of someone in an act of terrorist violence can never be put away as one can the death of an ancient relative.

As I saw again last Christmas, the wound remains open and raw, unexplained then and unexplained now; never closed, never to be closed. For Harrods, read Omagh, Hyde Park, Warrington and all the other atrocities in the IRA’s failed campaign to intimidate our nation.

That profound sense of loss and hurt can be no different for the Queen and Prince Philip. Yet politics and the desire for closure dictate that she, as head of state, must welcome McGuinness and that her husband, as prince consort, must do so too.

I see the need for it and part of me welcomes it. Because of Philip’s death I want peace in Northern Ireland more than anything and the Good Friday Agreement which swept away huge chapters of a bloody past I celebrate but I could never shake Philip’s killers by the hand.

Last week I saw the superhuman side of the Queen, putting aside personal feelings in the pursuit of a better world. I just wish I could be as strong as that.